Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a weekly columnist and senior writer for The American Prospect. He also writes for the Plum Line blog at The Washington Post and The Week and is the author of Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success.

Recent Articles

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Donald Trump is seen through the window of his motorcade vehicle on May 15, 2018. P eriodically over the last year and a half we've had cause to ask ourselves, "Is this it? Is this the moment we've been dreading and warning about? When Donald Trump truly becomes the kind of president he keeps telling us he wants to be?" Sometimes it's hard to tell. It's as if we're all standing in a river of corruption rushing around us with impossible speed and force, and every once in a while another wave smashes us in the face. Was that wave the real problem, or is it the whole river? The answer is: It's both. The "Deep State" may be a myth, but we've seen the installation of the Trump State, which is something far worse. Here's what Trump tweeted on Sunday: I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or...

(Sipa USA via AP Images) Neo-Nazisa and white supremacists and other alt-right factions in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 I f the last eighteen months have been defined by a single question, it might be this one: How did this happen? By "this" I mean not just the election of Donald Trump but also everything that surrounds it: the ideological polarization, the newfound strength of right-wing extremism, the degradation of American civil life, all of it. And who's to blame? Why, liberals, of course. Perhaps not entirely, but many conservatives want to be sure we understand that the more extreme and embarrassing rightists wouldn't be what they have become were it not for the relentless contempt heaped on everyone to the right of Bernie Sanders by snooty liberal elitists. And if Trump gets re-elected, well, that'll be liberals' fault too. That's the opinion increasingly expressed not just in safe conservative spaces, but in places like The New York Times , which on Sunday ran a...

(Sipa via AP Images) Trump speaks to reporters while departing from the White House on May 4, 2018. T he Trump omniscandal—which is really four or five separate but related scandals swirling around each other in a boiling stew of venal criminality—is slowly coming into focus. When that process is complete, it may wind up being simultaneously less than many believe, and more appalling than we could have imagined. It's important to keep that in mind, because as we get each new revelation we have a tendency to measure it against our expectations of what a real scandal ought to look like, expectations that may make it harder to come to grips with all the places these investigations are taking us. Specifically, we yearn for a kind of narrative coherence in which motivations are simple, individuals' actions make sense, and the whole thing has at least some measure of organization to it. We've been taught by innumerable movies and TV shows what a conspiracy looks like, and one of its...

AP Photo/Josh Edelson A marijuana plant is seen on Hippie Hill in San Francisco I f you're a politician wondering whether you should try pot, I've got news for you: Everybody's doing it. Why not give it a try? You don't want people to think you're square, do you? By "try pot," I don't mean actually smoke it (though who knows what's going on in the cloakroom these days). I mean come out for some form of marijuana legalization. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner recently joined the board of a cannabis company, and last week on semi-official marijuana holiday April 20, certified cool dude Chuck Schumer, the leader of Democrats in the Senate, announced that he will soon be introducing legislation to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. Oh how times have changed. They're hardly the only ones. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, being pushed to the left by a primary challenge from Cynthia Nixon, now says the state should start preparing to legalize it. Major corporations like HP...

(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) Michael Cohen walks in New York on April 11, 2018. L et me suggest an image from the near future and see what your reaction is. It's a few months from now, and Michael Cohen is being led into a police station in Manhattan in handcuffs, his jacket slightly askew, his face wearing an expression that's two-thirds defiance, one-third fear. In fact, you might have pictured that already yourself. If you look at Cohen on the news and say, "Oh yeah, that guy's definitely going to jail for something," you are not alone. While Cohen is usually described as "Donald Trump's personal lawyer," in fact he was much more: a deal-maker, a problem-solver, and the guy Trump would turn to if he wanted to threaten somebody. "If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn't like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump's benefit," Cohen once told ABC News . "If you do something wrong, I'm going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I'm not going to let you go until I'm...